Bernie Sanders Overstates Number of Americans Without Health Insurance

Explaining why he is likely to vote against an $858 billion defense spending bill, Sen. Bernie Sanders wrongly stated that there are “85 million Americans who have no health insurance.” The government estimate is about 27 million.

The Vermont independent — who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, and hasn’t ruled out running in 2024 — made his remarks on CNN’s “State of the Union.” When asked if he would vote against the defense bill that passed the House on Dec. 8, Sanders replied, “Yes, I think I will,” and then called for spending more on domestic needs.

Sanders, Dec. 11: Look, we have — we have 85 million Americans who have no health insurance. We have 600,000 people who are homeless. We have a dysfunctional health care system, dysfunctional childcare system, where working parents are paying $15,000 a year, on average, for child care. We have got to start protecting the needs of working families.

Health Insurance

The figure Sanders gave for the number of Americans without health insurance is wrong. As we wrote two months ago, 27.2 million people, or 8.3% of the U.S. population, did not have health insurance at any point in 2021, according to the Census Bureau’s latest annual report.

Also, the National Health Interview Survey, which measures the number of uninsured at the time people were interviewed, placed the uninsured figure at 27.4 million in a new report released earlier this month.

NHIS, Dec. 1: From January through June 2022, 27.4 million people of all ages (8.3%) were uninsured at the time of interview. This was lower than 2021, when 30.0 million people of all ages (9.2%) were uninsured.

Sanders apparently misspoke. “It’s 85 million uninsured or underinsured,” Mike Casca, the senator’s spokesperson, told us, citing a September report by the Commonwealth Fund. Sanders has used that statistic before. In an October opinion piece for the Hill, Sanders wrote that “85 million Americans are uninsured or under-insured.”

But that’s not right, either.

The Commonwealth Fund study cited by Sanders’ office estimated that 43% of U.S. adults ages 19 to 64 were “inadequately insured” at the time of the survey, which was conducted between March and July. The report says the biennial survey is “representative of approximately 196.7 million U.S. adults ages 19 to 64,” meaning about 84.6 million adults were “inadequately insured” at the time of the survey.

That’s where Sanders got his 85 million figure. However, the 85 million includes 21.6 million who were insured at the time of the survey but had a gap in coverage at some point in the 12 months prior to the date of the survey, the study said. That means 63 million were either uninsured at the time of the survey or underinsured — contrary to what Sanders said in his op-ed.

Sanders has been making a version of this health insurance claim for a long time. It was one of his talking points during his unsuccessful run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

At three presidential debates in 2019, Sanders said 87 million Americans have no health insurance or are underinsured. But, as we wrote then, the 87 million in the Commonwealth Fund report included 19.3 million who were insured but had been uninsured at some point in the prior year, according to the report.

Child Care Costs and Homelessness

The senator’s office did not provide us with a source for Sanders’ statement that “working parents are paying $15,000 a year, on average, for child care.” If it does, we will update this item.

The cost is high, but the national average may not be as high as Sanders said. Also, how high depends on where you live.

We could find no official government source for the national average annual cost of child care, but two federal departments have cited reports from Child Care Aware of America, a nonprofit that calls itself “the nation’s leading voice on child care.”

In a report issued last year on the economics of child care, the Department of Treasury said the national average was $10,000 in 2017, citing a 2018 report from Child Care Aware. In a separate report on the rising cost of child care from 1995 to 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services cited a 2019 Child Care Aware report.

Child Care Aware has since issued a new report that puts the national average at “around $10,600” in 2021, but warns that the amount “varies dramatically from state to state.” In an appendix to its 2021 report, Child Care Aware estimated that the annual cost of full-time, center-based infant care ranged from a low of $7,280 in Mississippi to a high of $25,523 in Washington, D.C.

Lastly, there is support for Sanders’ statement that there are “600,000 people who are homeless” in the United States.

In a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Analysis released in June, three University of Chicago researchers put the homeless figure at 500,000 to 600,000. That report said, “Our analyses suggest that on a given night there are 500,000-600,000 people experiencing homelessness in the U.S., about one-third of whom are sleeping on the streets and two-thirds in shelters.”

Separately, the Department of Housing and Urban Development released its annual homeless assessment report in February for 2021 that said “more than 326,000 people experienced sheltered homelessness in the United States on a single night in 2021.” But that figure doesn’t include the unsheltered homeless. The report said HUD was “only able to provide national estimates on sheltered homelessness,” because of incomplete data on the unsheltered homeless population.


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I am seeing a lot of nonsense being reported about the America-attacking Donald Trump alleging last weekend he will not seek a third term in office ... as if anything that comes out of his dirty mouth is at all credible.

Have we learned nothing yet?

Listen to me, good people: Unless he has the decency to die first, America’s First Felon has no intention of leaving the White House in 2028.

What we do between now and then in revolt of this revolting man will tell the tale.

After 10 years of carpet-bombing the truth, can everybody at least understand that we can never trust a single word that comes out of the dirty mouth of the woman-abusing narcissist, who according to one count told an astonishing 30,573 lies and mistruths during his first chaotic presidency when hundreds of thousands of Americans needlessly died because of his RFK Jr.-like response to a once-in-a-century killer pandemic?

We need only rely on his past despicable actions to get at his true future intent, because whatever this racist lowlife — who is actively trying to disappear people of color and their history from our government websites — is saying and what he has actually done is far, far worse.

We know by his actions that after losing the 2020 election by more than seven million votes to Joe Biden, Trump began making it crystal clear to everyone that he had no intention of stepping down and honoring the vote of the people.

Thus, the Big Lie was hatched.

Rather than gracefully concede his loss, as Hillary Clinton had done four years earlier after winning close to three million votes MORE than him, Trump decided to go to war against America.

We know by his revolting actions, that after losing scores of legal challenges, and publicly threatening and shaking down poll workers and election officials, Trump finally summoned the worst people in America, his lawless base, to Washington in an attempt to violently overthrow the government.

We watched for hours as overmatched law enforcement officers were beaten with American and rebel flags, and stomped into curbs. We watched as Trump’s thugs breached our Capitol inflicting millions of dollars worth of damage, and then hunted down politicians threatening them with death and hanging.

And while all this was happening Trump took no action, except for hoping the insurrection would succeed.

Finally, when it was clear the attack had been put down, he grudgingly harrumphed in front of a camera on the White House lawn, and through gritted, yellow teeth told the people who had attacked us that he loved them.

He told them that he loved them …

I just want to stop here for a second and ask again, because it can never be asked enough: What would have happened on this terrible day if Black people had inflicted the worst attack on our Capitol since 1812? Would they have have been told they were loved by the outgoing President of the United States?

Fact is, there would have been thousands of dead and wounded littering the Capitol grounds, and most white people would have been falling all over themselves to say they got what they deserved.

Because that is how America operates today and always. We are a racist country governed by white people, who predominate our elected offices, our military and law enforcement barracks, but mostly our banks.

I’ll never forget any of what happened that terrible day, but mostly I’ll never forget that chilling moment when the racist Trump told those disgusting people that he loved them, because that’s when I knew for sure he was coming back.

It was yet another call to the far-right, racist extremists who cement his morally bankrupt base to “stand back and standby.”

By telling the people who violently attacked us that he loved them, Trump was making it plain as day that unless he was jailed and/or prevented by Congress from ever running again, he was going to be back to finish us off in 2024.

He was telling us he understood America and the degenerates in the Republican Party better than the elected officials who were supposed to keep us safe, and honor our Constitution.

He was telling us he knew this country better than Mitch McConnell, or Biden, or anybody who he appointed to be his Attorney General. He was making a bet on injustice and cruelty, and against the country he had attacked.

First, McConnell and 42 other gutless Republican senators failed to vote to convict at Trump's second impeachment trial, which would have prevented the America-attacker from ever running for office again. Then there was the three-dimensional chess-playing legal scholar, Merrick Garland, who spent four years successfully putting himself in check.

So catastrophically did Biden's attorney general fail us, that even the foot soldiers in the Jan. 6 attack who he was able to successfully jail are now back on the streets because he refused to lay a glove on their lawless leader, the most dangerous man in the world.

Finally, there was Biden, a good man who spent four years too often talking about an America that never existed, and ended his term perched in front of a crackling fire at the White House just days after Trump had carried out his threat to return, and enthusiastically offering him his hand, a warm smile and a, “Welcome back!”

Welcome back. My God …

When will people start taking this violent, democratic arsonist seriously? When will we start looking at his repulsive actions, instead of taking him at his empty word?

I bring all this up today because in addition to making sure we never forget what has really happened to America, we keep a close eye on what is really happening in America.

The American-attacking Trump is telling us in words what he has been telling us with his actions the past 10 years: The Constitution of the United States simply does not apply to him.

When asked during the same interview last Sunday in which he said he wouldn’t run again, NBC’s Kristen Welker pressed him on if he will uphold that Constitution.

Trump answered this way: “I don’t know.”

Now ask yourself what would have happened if Barack Obama had given that answer.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

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